Date: Tue, 4 Apr 1995 22:34:16 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: human body transformation




Well, there is the issue whether or not the body is a subset of 
information theory, which I think not (a la Penrose for example) - in 
other words, is it a data base? And there are, for me, troubling 
implications about assuming it is -

Alan

On Tue, 4 Apr 1995, Patrick Hopkins wrote:

> Alan writes:
> 
> >>it's assumed that a 
> human being is readable, i.e. information, in the first place. Just as 
> Star Trek reproduces (for the most part) traditional gender stereotypes 
> and in fact operates through them, it reproduces what Kristeva calls "the 
> clean and proper body" (Powers of Horror), denuded of the abject, of 
> otherness, of alterity. All bodies are readable in the transporter...
> so the transporter perhaps, based on the family of entities (organic and 
> inorganic) needs a bit of the same/other.
> 
> It seems to me that this reads the transporter's transformation/transmission
> of the body through the worry of "reduction" or of "loss". I
> don't see what's supposed to be bad in the mere readability of the body.  Is
> something important about the body supposed to be lost here?  Or is it just
> that some remaining "mystery" or "otherness" or "indefinability" is supposed
> to be intrinsically valuable?  
> 
> Patrick
> 
> 
> 
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